Wednesday, July 27, 2011

If you hadn't noticed, there are quite a few women in the beer world in the area. Women brewers, beer writers, beer bar managers, etc, and they want to get more women out there to learn more and fall in love with beer. To that end, some of them decided to hold a girls' only beer 101 tasting class at Tony's Darts Away in Burbank, which houses over 30 California craft beers.

The beer tasting was led by Paige from Tony's Darts Away and Ting from Eagle Rock Brewery. For those of you who are interested, Ting actually holds girls' only beer classes at the brewery on the third Wednesday of every month.

Before the tasting, we had to first learn about the four major ingredients: water, hops, barley, and yeast.

Malt/malted barley gives color and body to the beer. Pilsner malt is the base malt (used in lagers) and determines the gravity (how much alcohol and sugar) of the beer. In addition, crystal malts are added. Named by numbers (like C-120), the higher number indicates a darker roast, which also gives more fruit characteristics.

Hops give bitterness to the beer (which comes from the alpha acids) and without them, the beer would be overwhelmingly sweet and have no balance. They showed us what the original dried hops look like (right) before they're packed into the pellets used today (left). The pellets save space and also make it easier to obtain consistent flavors.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

"Vodka is colorless, odorless, tasteless." I pretty much believed that too, so when an invitation to a vodka seminar and tasting set up by Luksusowa vodka came along, I was intrigued. Will I really be able to taste the difference between different vodkas? I wanted to see.

The vodka seminar is appropriately held at at Nic's Martini Lounge, a shrine to vodka in Beverly Hills and the home of the "vodbox" where you can enjoy their extensive vodka collection in a private chilled room while wearing their stash of fur coats.

Luksusowa Vodka. Photo courtesy of Shelley Buck

The seminar portion started with the history of vodka. Believed to originate from Poland (the first written evidence is a 1405 Polish manuscript), potato vodka became more popular in the 18th century because it is believed to be superior although the filtration method is more difficult. Charcoal filtration was started in Russia and is now believed to be the best method. (Luksusowa is supposed to be the highest rated potato vodka in the world, with a score of 94 from the Beverage Tasting Inst.).

The World War II destroyed the economy in Poland and Russia and many distilleries came to be sold to independent owners.

Vodka originally wasn't very popular in the US and they had to market it as the "white whiskey". It was apparently all thanks to Smirnoff that really popularized "vodka" and made it what it is here today. In 1975 Smirnoff outsold American whiskey.

Leading the tasting was the owner of Nic's himself, Larry Nicola a.k.a. "The Vodkateur."

On each table were a variety of items/nibbles meant to represent the more common flavor profiles of vodka (I was hungry and thought they were apps so I'd been eating them. Oops!).Anyway, there were rye bread, potato chips, sour cream (acidity), pop corn (representing butteriness of some vodka), dark and white chocolate chunks (bitterness), and "licorice."The British bartender Charles Vexenat who was making our cocktails was talking about these flavors, and he was looking for the licorice - which here came in the form of Red Vines. "That's licorice? Why is it red???". Beats me, Charles ...

We sniffed and sipped six different vodkas at room temperature (since chilling it often masks the underlying nose and flavor - this way you can more easily tell the differences).Some of the vodkas we tasted you are probably already very familiar with:

Finlandia (barley, Finland - obviously). I was surprised that it does actually taste like barley. This had a full bodied flavor.

Luksusowa (potato, Poland). Smells ... like water, really. Clean, without a harsh finish. Definitely the best of the bunch, and I'm not saying that because they're sponsoring this event.

Charles Vexenat, author of Mixellany's Annotated Bariana: A Practical Compendium of All American and British Drinks and a London-based bartender, was behind the bar making cocktails for us.The first cocktail I tried (left) was made with vodka, OJ, fig jam and lime juice. A sweet cocktail, but not cloyingly so. It's actually pretty good and balanced. The other drink was made with strawberry and basil. Less sweet with more depth.After we finished the tasting, Nic's provided some appetizers, all of which were supposed to complement vodka. You'd notice ingredients like rye and potato over and over again and if you're lucky, caviar.A nicely crispy roasted potato with sauerkraut and kielbasa sausage, "vodka salmon" on rye bread, potato latke topped with apple compote and caviar - and can't remember exactly what the last one was.

Vodka definitely gets a bad rap among my cocktailian/bar-regulars friends, but this ended up being a pretty cool seminar and taught me that I knew so little about vodka and I can't just dismiss it without learning more. I learnt a lot of about the history of vodka and I was surprised at how distinct the different vodkas tasted. Among the six, Luksusowa was definitely the crowd favorite and I was pleasantly surprised at the prices I found online, but I really need to have Larry guide me through more different vodkas in the vodbox.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Back in July I discovered Los Angeles' last remaining winery, San Antonio Winery in downtown LA. Since they now have a wine tasting seminar series, they invited me to check out the first one, Wine 101.

The tasting seminar involves a 4-course luncheon paired with eight different wines.

The seminar is led by Michael Papalia, their wine Store manager. He first went over the basic steps of wine tasting (the look, swirl, sniff, slurp, etc).The afternoon started out with a plate of Puma goat cheese, orange and roasted eggplant salad (french vanilla glaze, basil oil and microgreens), paired with Champagne Duval-Leroy Brut, a nice champagne for $30 a bottle.Nice contrast between the citrus and the creaminess of the eggplant and goat cheese. The cheese was not overwhelming either, but the eggplant was a little cold.

Michael Papalia discuss the different grape varieties out there - from the 24,000 names of varieties to the 5,000 truly distinct varieties, to just 150 grown in commer cial quantities. Out of all these, only 9 are considered classic varieties. Oh, the competition ...

The next course was broiled miso Alaskan black cod on potato and chive pancake with miso glaze.This was a bit tough, a little overcooked, but it had nice flavors. I also liked the pancake quite a bit but the dish overall lacked texture.This was "paired" with 3 different whites for our comparison. The first two were the Frog's Leap 2008 Sauvignon Blanc(Napa Valley) and San Simeon 2006 Chardonnay(Monterey), a good pick for a Wine 101 course since the attendees can distinguish between the crispness of the Sauvignon Blanc and the buttery Chardonnay.

The third wine was also informatively different with the Maddalena Vineyard 2008 Riesling, Monterey - this was a sweet, almost dessert-wine-like Riesling which I enjoyed in itself though not so much with the cod. I actually saved half of my glass and had it with my dessert later on (a better pairing, IMHO).

For our main entree: Roasted ancho pepper crusted rack of lamb (roasted wild mushroom risotto, pinot noir coriander sauce)This was very good, the lamb was very tender if a bit fatty and very flavorful. A great dish, one unexpectedly good considering I was just at a wine tasting seminar at a winery. According to San Antonio Winery's owner, they bring in an outside chefs to prepare the food for these special tasting events and they intend to keep doing so for more improvement and to keep it interesting.

The lamb chop was paired with three reds.The 2005 Maddalena Merlot is a pretty smooth wine for only $14 a bottleThe 2006 Luigi Bosca Malbec was a table favorite, though I think this wine would be better after aging a little longer. It does, however, pair nicely with the lamb chop.San Antonio “Cask 520″, Paso Robles. This was a pretty good wine, and definitely one of San Antonio's best wines and a good buy at $28.

For dessert, we had some Island mango mousse with candied macadamia nuts and toasted coconut shavingsIt was a simple dessert but I liked it a lot, especially with the nice aroma from the toasted coconuts and the texture of the candid macadamia.The La Quinta Syrah Port that was paired with the dessert was a bit too syrupy and sweet for my taste and I thought the Riesling from earlier was a better pairing.

Papalia of course explained the process of making port, in particular brandy fortified port. If you're a wine newbie you will definitely learn a lot from this seminar, from the difference in the process between white and red wines, why chardonnay tends to be more buttery, and much more. Did you know that an oak barrel is individually hand crafted and runs about $1000 and can only be used for 2, or at most 3 vintages? Of course, you can then use them to age distilled spirits after, but still now I can understand more why wines can be so expensive.